It is hard to mediate a dispute where both sides feel entitled to use scorched earth tactics that ensure that innocent people get hurt. The gay (or same-sex) marriage wars have quickly escalated to that point, and while it may have been predictable, it was not necessary.
Gay marriage advocates, who were winning and, it is now clear, will win, could have shown patience and compassion toward the unsuspecting Americans of faith who weren’t paying close attention to the epic cultural shift underway, and who are reacting like most human beings react when the basic traditions, assumptions, and beliefs that they grew up believing were good, fair and immutable suddenly move beneath their feet like unstable tectonic plates—with confusion, anger, fear, impulsive words and actions based on instinct and panic. The gay advocates couldn’t bring themselves to do it, though. They rationalized their aggressive strategy with the Goldwateresque “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” approach to social change. They insisted on demonizing opponents, without caring about their motives or their lack of understanding of the issues. Even passive acceptance wasn’t enough: the pro-gay marriage warriors had to purge contrary thoughts from the culture. Forget about tangible opposition: anyone who wasn’t thinking friendly thoughts about gays and their unions had to be destroyed. Use the fear of the tradition-bound against them. Crush them…beat them into submission.
It has been ugly, destructive, and wrong. American shouldn’t lose their jobs for signing a petition or voting for a referendum. States, and all their businesses and individual livelihoods, shouldn’t be boycotted because of misguided laws. This week, a family that just want to make and sell good pizza was drawn into a controversy it neither understood nor could be expected to, and was targeted for destruction after the owner made a comment rife with ignorance about, well, everything. Does it really matter that a pizza seller mistakenly thinks that it would be honorable and virtuous not to cater a hypothetical same-sex wedding reception? Does the family really have to be brought to its knees, made an example of, and ruined to teach anyone else what can happen to them if they don’t conform to the new, mandated belief system?
Who respects or likes people who act this way? We call them bullies. We call them cruel. We call them fanatics. ( This hateful CBS reporter tried to derail the GoFundMe effort to raise funds to rescue the pizza place.) Unless we are determined to understand their motives, we are very likely to hate them.
So the advocates of gay marriage really think it advances their cause, and it is a just cause, to make people hate and fear them.
What utter, utter folly.
Naturally, as in any war, the other side has responded in an equally brutal and ugly manner, just worse—dumber, to begin with. It’s Dresden for Coventry all over again.
In Florida, a former televangelist named Joshua Feuerstein called a local bakery and asked the owner to make a sheet cake with an anti-gay marriage message on it. He didn’t really need a cake, of course. He was just looking for a victim. The owner said that she wouldn’t put such a message on a cake, because she’s a decent, kind and professional businesswoman. Feuerstein, parody of a Christian and disgraceful American that he is, then used his more than a million Facebook followers to target the bakery, chosen at random to illustrate a point that is mistaken and wrong in every way.
Think of it: a million people follow this ignorant, hateful, abusive man. Frightening.
He posted a video launching the attack, disclosed the owner’s name, and encouraged the good Christians of shriveled souls and negligible IQ scores to “call her yourself, ask her the same exact questions,” “show the hypocrisy,” and generally harass the store out of existence. They made a good pass at it, too, flooding the business’ Facebook page with insults, posting multiple one-star reviews, and making up bad experiences they said they had doing business with the store. Here are a couple of examples:
There was no hypocrisy. Refusing to put abusive words on a cake, a sign or any product is a business’s or an individual’s absolute right. That’s expressive speech. There is no discrimination in such a business decision at all, but Feuerstein is as ignorant as he is vicious. As despicable as it is to set out to destroy a business for saying that it thinks it might discriminate against gays in a hypothetical situation unlikely to occur (catering a gay wedding with pizza), trying to destroy another business based on total, inexcusable ignorance of the Constitution is far worse.
Ironically, today Colorado handed down its ruling on a discrimination claim by a similar anti-gay Christian bigot who ordered anti-gay cakes to force a confrontation. The bakery told him it would make the Bible-shaped cakes he wanted, but without the requested anti-homosexuality words and images. The resulting complaint asserted that this refusal constituted unequal treatment and the denial of goods and services based on the bigot’s religion. Garbage. The words were rejected, not the religion; there was no discrimination, just discriminating good manners and taste. And so the state civil rights commission properly held.
Animals and people are dangerous when cornered, and this is the current stance of the unthinking, unreasoning, and desperate anti-gay marriage segment of the population. They have blown the issue out of all proportion, and are apparently willing to sacrifice anything and anyone as they make their final, Masada-like stand against the changes in law and culture dictated by the ongoing process of humanity’s evolving understanding of right and wrong.
Both sides of the conflict share blame for the shear mindlessness of the carnage, but it is the gay-marriage opponents who will be most accountable for the damage. After all, their opponents just want to be treated like everyone else, and to have the rights guaranteed to all American citizens. It is inconceivable to me that anyone would think that the ethical course is to destroy lives and businesses to prevent that.
The manner in which the gay marriage culture war is being waged, indeed the fact that it had to be a war at all, embarrasses the nation and the species.
Ethics Alarms 
Excellent post, I agree whole-heartedly. A boycott by members of their town of a little over 2,000 would have had the effect of them perhaps rethinking their position, if it became a community issue. I think that in cases like this, of small family-owned businesses, a boycott, if one occurs, should be local and by those who might actually be in a position to patronize the business in question. The activists will make more enemies this way. One unintended consequence of the scorched-earth approach is that it often prompts sympathy for the victims, as with the pizza places’ Go Fund Me. If you drive someone out of business, you’ll end up looking cruel and fanatic in your beliefs. It will one day backfire.
Apparently Florida is a two party state when recording phone calls. Would that apply to Feuerstein’s call?
Sure.
I find this ,a href=”http://www.thebatt.com/opinion/guest-column-years-after-a-gay-rights-ruling-changed-a/article_4d6b6198-d820-11e4-8254-8ff44b4cdc3d.html” column refreshing.
I agree: encouraging.
I fail to understand the ethical problem with boycotts. If I choose not to spend money on pickle soaked chicken sandwiches because I don’t want part of that money to go to someone who donates to anti-gay causes, or I choose not to buy products I think might have been made with slave labor am I not then making a legitimate ethical choice?
Do you think refusing patronage is really the equivalent of refusing service? The latter removes a person’s ability to participate full in society the former is a decision that the value of a product isn’t worth the cost (in this case part of the cost being social rather than monetary.)
Individuals can ethically patronize or not for any reason. Boycotts are organized efforts to do economic damage. They are punitive and coercive, and almost always cause unreasonable and unfair collateral damage.
An individual choice isn’t punitive and coercive? What if I make the reasons public? That encourages others to make the same choice, no?
What if I write letters telling the company how I feel and what I’m doing, a letter to the editor of the local paper, a blog post? What if I step it up and paint a sign and then protest in front of the business? If I don’t step it up to threats or acts of violence (and I would never!) then I’m just using speech.
Isn’t your blog post just as coercive? You’re using your speech to bring scorn on people who’s actions you don’t like, or in a more charitable light, pointing out their errors publicly as a way to modify their behavior.
Uh, no?
You really need to have explained the difference between individual action and coordinated action, between an individual expression and a mob? between words and actions? An opinion piece is persuasion, not coercion. You really don’t see the difference between “you should do this” and “You have to do this, or else?”
No wonder you’re so confused.
I would also point out that the two instances in the post above show exactly what is unethical about boycotts.
Not patronizing a business is different from putting out a call to thousands of people from all over the country on social media to drive a pizza place in a town of a little over 2,000 people that none of those people will ever visit, out of business.
You should have made this post two or three years ago, before things got as ugly as they have gotten. This culture war has provided the blueprint for future clashes, and those on the left will not have a moral or ethical leg to stand on if later the gun owners, say, decide to boycott a whole state or intentionally drive someone out of business, all the while calling them a half-dozen kinds of ignorant and ten different kinds of profane names. I wouldn’t draw a comparison between this and the Dresden raid, which I think covers other ethics issues. I would compare this more to the use of poison gas and flamethrowers in WW1, which took warfare to a new low and, literally, poisoned the air. This is going to poison the air for a good long time.
Well, I wrote a post on the Ethics Scoreboard over ten years ago explaining the basis of the conflict to come. Its sense was that both sides had powerful forces driving their passion, and that gay opponents were driven by morality (which often creates a fertile soil for prejudice) while the change was being driven by law and ethics. I also suggested that absent a change in the Constitution, the anti-gay marriage position was bound to lose.
I didn’t see the culture moving to a resolution this fast; and I certainly didn’t see the nastiness and hatefulness building to this point.
As with Obamacare, I think gay marriage has some problems attributable to its having been forced down the country’s throat in hyper speed. But as a buddy of mine said, the gay marriage debate was over once marriage was defined as a “right.” (And here, like most guys, I’ve always considered marriage a burden. Hahaha)
Well, it’s also been accepted by the public at hyper-speed, in part because most people don’t care one way or the other.
Exactly! I am a conservative, and I live in a very conservative part of a very conservative state, and I can’t find a single person in my circle of friends and acquaintances who gives a fig about this issue. Let the gay population experience the joys of married life, and create their fair share of business for the divorce lawyers as well. Let’s move on, please!
Is that a good thing? Most people don’t care about an undeclared presidential candidate’s destruction of evidence “because it was convenient.”
I didn’t either, I was thinking probably 2024 or somewhere in that area. However, a lot of the change has been driven by lawsuits, not elections, and lawsuits don’t tend to take as long. Given the political process I do not know if ultimately all states would have changed be democratic concensus, the ones that did are all reliably blue, but at least it would have reflected accurately the change “on the ground” as it were, meaning among Joe Average. As it is, the change has been very fast, frequently accompanied by heated rhetoric and name-calling, and, due to the ease of communicating via the internet, the heated rhetoric and name-calling has gotten a lot of play, and a lot of response. Can you really blame someone for not being too too happy about seeing his long-held convictions turned upside down, forced to go along with the new program, AND called ten different kinds of ignorant in the process, punctuated with a “fuck you?” There’s only so many times you can be kicked in the balls and say “thank you ay I have another?”
There’s always been a virulent, nasty, Oscar Wilde-ish strain in the gay rights movement. “We’re queer and we’re here,” outrageous behavior during gay pride parades, etc. Not anything I’ve ever understood or found very sensible. Of course, I’m still having a hard time with gay marriage since I remember the days when gay guys snarled at straight people for being bourgeois breeders as they ran around Lower Manhattan in nothing more than their Daisy Dukes and combat boots. Now they want to be bourgeois breeders. And of course there’s a virulent strain in the Bible Thumpers. I think there used to be an anti-assimilation cadre in the gay rights movement. I wonder whether the more virulent activists wouldn’t be better suited to pursuing that model. I remember some lesbian comedienne [Ruth Buzzy?] not too long ago saying she was reluctantly thinking of getting married to her long time partner after having put it off in the hopes “we could come up with something better [than a gay version of heterosexual marriage].” Of course, there are ghettos of non-assimilationist Bible Thumpers. They call them counties down south.
But I just think there’s a lot more to this than “ick factor,” so called. I think gay people and straight people really, really, and essentially, see much of the world differently. Hence the battle.
Of course, lefties and conservatives see much of the world differently.
I think, I say I THINK, that a fair amount, maybe even a majority, of gay people might have as big a problem with coercion and bizarre public behavior as those opposed. I think the same might be true of religious people. I have really no issue with the fact that a same sex couple live on the block and act like everyone else for the most part. OK, maybe I roll my eyes when they put out the rainbow flag, and I am not particularly interested in having them over for dinner, but if they have a mortgage together, file paperwork at City Hall together, raise a kid together, whatever, I’m not interested in telling them what to do. Now, if they start behaving oddly in public, be it exhibitionist or otherwise, where I can’t avoid seeing it, or they start acting coercively, like leaning on me for contributions to some gay charity and accusing me of being a bigot if I decide to direct my charity dollars elsewhere, we are going to have a problem. By the same token maybe they roll their eyes if I put a statue of St. Francis in the garden or hang out a Vatican flag at Easter, and maybe they aren’t too interested in inviting me over for a meal, but that’s their prerogative. If I was to play loud religious music out my window, where no one could avoid it, or I came around looking for contributions for the Franciscans overseas, sneering at those who wouldn’t give as anti-Catholic, then that’s a problem.
I do agree that there are non-assimilationists on both sides. However, I am not sure those folks would get too far IF the assimilationists on both sides agreed to get together and make some kind of fair agreement that would allow equal rights and individual rights somewhere at a line that would satisfy the mainstream. At that point, let the Fred Phelpses and Dan Savages go their own way as what they are – fringe whackos.
There’s a big streak in the media and perhaps popular culture that insists that if you’re not excited and enthusiastic about gay marriage and homosexuality, you’re a bigot. I’ve always thought the divorce bar were big supporters of gay marriage since, what follows gay marriage one out of two times? Gay DIVORCE. Maybe at some point things will just sort of calm down and we’ll have some more live and let live.
I think that the ability to hide in plain sight is both a blessing and a curse to the gay community. What it means is that people who don’t want to make a fuss, the moderates, the non-militants, the people you probably have coffee with every now and again, they don’t need to tell you. But that also means that the community as a whole is defined by its extremes. Something like 2% of the population is gay, what percentage of the population do you think even attends the pride parades?
With great power comes great responsibility, the media and all its power has come down on the side of gay marriage, that media represents a powerful weapon that is not being wielded responsibly. There has been a cultural shift but gay rights advocates may be over playing their hand, the majority is neutral to ambivalent not “supporters” and although there are powerful far right anti gay marriage forces the balance of power goes to gay marriage advocacy. This issue doesn’t doesn’t affect the majority but the attacks on liberty do, if it continues like this the majority may decide gays are a blight on society and insure their marginalization.
You should do this _or else_ I will take my business elsewhere (and tell everyone why, and write letters and hold up signs telling everyone what you’re doing.) If that choice is ethical for one person, why is it no longer ethical when you have ten thousand?
The above tactics of flooding phones and false reviews? Just as wrong when only one person does it.
You are being intentionally obtuse. One person is one person. One person’s actions has the impact of one person’s actions. A million people coordinated in action is a materially different action, with materially different and unethically coercive purpose because its results will be, and are intended to be, more damaging. Flicking someone with a finger is battery, and so is hitting that person with a sledge hammer. You are arguing, disingenuously I hope, that they are the same.
You can’t see that the effects of 10,000 are far more severe and often disproportionate to what’s being protested? When you were growing up, don’t you remember being taught that it’s not fair to gang up on people? It’s bullying by mob. The thousands who attacked the pizza shop don’t, and never will patronize it, they’re just joining in for the ‘fun’ of it.
Valleygrrl is either trolling or is incapable of critical thought. Her argument is simply not logical, though I have encountered it before.
I’m not trolling and I can make the distinction between a rude gesture and a sledgehammer. What I don’t understand is why flipping a middle finger at someone is less ethical when 2 or 10 people to it. The mass of all those middle fingers don’t collapse into a sledgehammer, they remain middle fingers. If it was wrong the first time then the second person compounded it but if the first was acceptable then why did the second person with the exact same motivation change that?
I’m not endorsing the harassing tactics. I’m just honestly baffled as to why one person can vote with his or her wallet and yet a group agreeing to do it is a problem.
No harassing phone calls, no blocking the doors to keep people out, no denying goods or services, no false reviews, no lies. Just plain old fashion protest, refusing patronage, picketers if people are so inclined, blog posts, letters to the media. I’ve always believed that this method was good, people getting together to try to change something. I’ve always believed that was what you were _supposed_ to do.
crella, fair probably isn’t a road we should travel. Tit for tat is completely fair, the topic is ethics. I posit that the ethics of voting with your wallet, a boycott, doesn’t change based on the number of people doing it.
The choice of target and cause of the boycott are a different question.
I think the issue isn’t so much with the number of people, but with the organization involved. If everyone doing so spontaneously decided to do it, that’s different from having a small group exhorting their fellows to punish someone. They are leveraging their social influence to produce a greater harm. One is just the market reacting, the other is someone trying to manipulate the market to achieve a result.
I’m not greatly troubled by boycotts per se, but the people behind them often reveal themselves as self righteous totalitarians.
“crella, fair probably isn’t a road we should travel”
Why not?
Already answered, Try to prevent a gay couple from participating fully in society, become a pariah, that’s fair. Hit someone and they hit you, that’s fair. Steal an election, have one stolen from you, that’s fair. To repay everyone wrong with another is fair.
Typo. That was meant to be ‘every one wrong’ and probably should have just been ‘every wrong,’
The problem is that retribution in the name of fairness turns the Golden Rule on its head: It becomes “do unto others what they’ve done to you.” Maybe technically fair, but it probably wouldn’t produce a society we’d enjoy living in.
I have had some personal experience with this very issue, being told “You will do and believe this or else.” My response was, admittedly, less than rational, but I suspect that most people’s response would be. Until being told that, I was as neutral on this issue as it is possible to be. I am not, now, but I am recovering my equilibrium, at least to the extent that I am not snarling at people when the subject comes up anymore.
Your experience is very common and natural. One would think activists would be smart enough to take that fact into consideration. But no.
I don’t see this as a gay rights phenomenon so much as I see it as a progressive phenomenon, in which their most active battleground is gay rights. I could cite similar acts in regards to race baiting or rape hysteria. I agree, it’s horrible behavior, no matter who does it, but I think we give these idiots too much credit. This battle is being won in the hearts and minds of America and in her courtrooms by people much more reasonable than the idiot horde clamoring for shares and likes.
And I was struck when reading your opening paragraph how similar the shift in the general population’s stance on gay marriage to the plot of 12 Angry Men. It started with a few people willing to make a stand, who convinced others with reason and logic, once logic had convinced about half the nation, the wobblers switched sides, and all we’re left with on the other side are people with emotional hang-ups.
Unfortunately, if we boil it down strictly to the law, the law is on the side of equal protection and the only legal dispute is where the line is drawn between equal protection and individual rights. Inevitably it never boils down to that, though, because the shouters get all the press. That said, once the SCOTUS rules however they are going to rule, it’s going to be a very big mistake to take that decision and use it in a coercive way, because that’s going to open a whole new set of questions and prolong a fight that’s gotten, in the end, uglier than it needed to. I must plead guilty to getting ugly a few times myself, but, who are we kidding, no fight is ever won by spewing bile and it’s in no one’s best interest to turn to out-and-out brownshirting on either side. Yes, sometimes you have to accept a loss with grace, BUT, there is such a thing as being a poor winner as well (not exactly behavior modeled by the current administration) and grinding a defeated opponent into the dirt, or acting like having beaten him you now have to break him as well, although some groups practice it (Islam, for example, with the status of “dhimmi”) is not ethical.
I think I disagree with your first point. What RFRAs do, basically, is make legal exceptions. What we’re saying is: This is the law, everyone has to follow it, and then, we will make reasonable accommodations for bona fide religious reasons, in cases where the rights of other people are not infringed. If you disagree with that, I’d love to know your reasoning.
And if we accept that, “the only legal dispute is where the line is drawn between equal protection and individual rights” just isn’t true. That line was already drawn in the law that everyone is supposed to follow. Where the line actually is, is whether or not there is a bona fide religious reason for the exception, and whether that exception will infringe on the rights of other people. I’d love to see the arguments that it actually goes against scripture to (as an example) make pizzas for a gay wedding, there might even be scripture, I’m not an expert…. But the behavior utterly fails the second test. We have a right to not be discriminated against.
All that said though…. I really do think businesses should be allowed to discriminate. It might not be legal. It’s definitely not ethical. But I want to know that the store owner is a bigoted ass. Up here in Canada, there was a story about a lesbian couple who’s 10 month old daughter was denied service because the provider didn’t like that the girl’s parents were lesbians. Is that fair? No. Is that ethical? Not even a little. Is it legal? No. But do you really want your little girl staying with a bigot who hates you for who you are? Do you really want your cake made by someone who hates you? I want a window sticker. I want a rainbow with a black circle and a line through it. Because I don’t want to give those asshats my money.
OK, fair enough wrt the first paragraph, I was saying that the 14th amendment equal protection clause seems to usually be given greater deference than the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause. There’s nothing in the scripture that says “thou shalt not make pizzas for a gay wedding,” although I’m pretty sure the same book that says to execute both parties to a gay sex act since they have done a disgusting thing covers that. Even I am not willing to go that far, that’s insane and too close to Saudis stoning adulterers. There’s also no right to get whoever to do whatever you want for you. The RFRA is not at all a bad idea, faith needs to be protected, BUT, not at the expense of becoming a license to discriminate. Exception: actual religious institutions.
I’d frankly just as soon know who is a bigoted jerk or a self-righteous loudmouth myself. Go ahead, plaster your views all over your window, and if I see a cross (or multiple religious symbols) with the black circle and line, or I see an elephant with the black circle and line, or I see the Che Guevara image or some crazy revolutionary quote, I’ll just walk on by, because I also don’t want to put money in the pockets of jerkassess who are going to hate me for what I believe or what I stand for or where I come from. I don’t so need a drink that I need to get one in the Irish pub where they have pictures of Roger Casement on the wall and I’ll get thrown out or beaten up for ordering a “black and tan” instead of a “half and half.” I don’t so need a book that I’ll walk into the bookstore with a crude joke about Ronald Reagan on the door and a Gloria Steinem quote about fish and bicycles on the wall. And I don’t so need balaklava or Turkish delight that I’ll walk into the shop that has a sticker as to how the Armenian genocide was a lie. Businessmen who put their hates and controversies on the front door are idiots.
Bravo.
Thanks. I think the last paragraph is just common business sense, though.
Common sense is becoming decidedly uncommon. But I think… And correct me if I’m wrong… But I think…. We might agree. And on this topic: Great Victory! *fistbump*
We might agree, this far, since you are one of the more sane pro-gay-marriage people. You also agree that coercion is wrong and do not appear to be in favor of public ah, attention-grabbing weirdness. The way I see it I can continue that limited part of the fight that has to do with guarding individual rights, including the right to practice one’s faith and speak one’s belief without fear of being persecuted and actually contribute something, or I can stay sitting in the back seat of the high school bus 29 years ago making up not clever and not funny insults that all have to do with the physical act of having gay sex. The fact is there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle now, and although I don’t think generations fought for the right to coerce or act crazy in public, I don’t think they fought and died for the right to lock 3% or 10% into permanent not just second-class status, but despised status. I have been in permanent despised status, and it sucks.
P.S. Dan Savage is still an ass, and if he doesn’t change focus he will find himself in the same place too many military officers found themselves when the war was over.
My resistance to same-sex marriage (now abandoned) was almost entirely the result of cognitive dissonance — hatred for the social-justice warriors who in any other universe would be widely recognized as what they are: cruel, vindictive bullies.
Separating the goal from the campaigners is difficult to do, especially when so many of the campaigners are such demonstrably nasty people.
Yet I also know good people who support same-sex marriage because they simply want to marry the person they love. I have two good friends who have been married by their own intent for five years and finally got legally married last year when their state had a turnaround on the issue. I know and love some truly wonderful young people who are quietly and earnestly supporting same-sex marriage because their present and future look brighter in a world that accepts it.
I can’t let my hatred for certain people who deserve it prevent me from giving the issue a fair, principled evaluation on its own merits. If not from my own principles, then I needed to re-examine the issue out of respect for the kind, intelligent, principled people I know who saw it differently than I did.
The progressive-left social justice war is going to destroy the foundations of good government and civil society if it keeps accelerating. These people are sowing the wind, and if they keep it up, they’re not going to enjoy the whirlwind they reap. No one will.
Oh, yeah… And the impetus for recognizing that dissonance so that I could set it aside? A great post on (where else…) Ethics Alarms a few months back. That, plus re-reading the Alarm Blockers page. I don’t comment much, but I read this site daily because it makes me *think.*
Me, too! I read here every day. I know that I can come here for analysis of the issues and discussion that is reasoned, not emoted. Too many people on social media let the blood rush to their heads and let the emotions of the moment speak for them, and anyone who doesn’t agree is an idiot or worse. Most internet discussion is like being back on the school bus in high school again.
Ing, I have to say that I too , was turned off the whole gay marriage issue by the viciousness of the rhetoric and the bullying. I had no desire to listen to or watch any of it, and it did keep me from really considering the facts.
When I was a kid, there was no gay marriage and no Internet porn. Now, there is gay marriage and Internet porn, and they are both evil. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Enjoy your Satanic world while it lasts.
I’m detecting a pattern here…
His own blog identifies himself as an atheist, so I’d assume he’s being tongue in cheek.
More likely extreme. I read his one post on homosexuality vs. left-handedness. It sounds like something Ann Coulter would write.
Here’s a delightful post: https://agalltyr.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/rape-is-as-natural-as-murder-and-theft/
That hides tiny snippets of truth amidst darlingly stupid comments like:
“Theft has also evolved, into the euphemism known as “business” or “capitalism”. (I don’t think all poverty is by choice.)”
Was there Internet when you were a kid? I guarantee there was porn…